No Witch Hunt Against Former Bar Employee

This disbarment of an attorney by a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court notes the nature of the allegations

bar counsel filed a petition for discipline against the respondent, asserting that, while acting as trustee and attorney-in-fact for his father, he had mishandled his father’s funds, intentionally depriving his father and his father’s estate of those funds for his own use.

There was an unusual claim of bias

After the board’s recommendation was filed in the county court, the respondent filed a motion to show cause, ‘alleging that the disciplinary proceeding itself was an “improper persecution” and a “witch hunt” based on “spurious and specious” lies and perjured testimony arising from the personal animosity of the respondent’s sister, who filed the original complaint with bar counsel, knowingly and improperly introduced at the hearing by bar counsel. The respondent maintained also that the disciplinary proceeding was pursued in part due to bar counsel’s personal bias and under a conflict of interest, in retaliation for a prior incident when the respondent and bar counsel both worked at the office of bar counsel in 1991.

The court

In addition, before me, as he did in hie motion to show cause, the respondent made various allegations concerning an improper motive of bar counsel in pursuing the investigation, based on an asserted bias from a previous employment relationship (what the respondent describes as a “personal vendetta” that resulted in a request that he resign from the office of bar counsel in 1991). As noted, I allowed bar counsel’s motion to file a.response to this argument, made by the respondent for the first time in his show cause motion; that response included two affidavits, one from the then bar counsel, and one from the then director of the consumer and attorney assistance program. Both affiants assert that they have no knowledge of any complaint, problem, or friction between current assistant bar counsel and the respondent at the time of his employment there in the early 1990s, while he was a law student. The director of the consumer and attorney assistance program asserts that, at this point in time, she remembers only that the respondent had’ worked briefly in that office and that he never mentioned any issue or concern relative to current assistant bar counsel; then bar counsel asserts that the respondent was asked to resign for reasons unrelated to assistant bar counsel. I decline the respondent’s request that, due to bar counsel’s purported personal animosity and bias, unsupported by anything in the record, the charges against him be dismissed and fines and sanctions be imposed against bar counsel.

The single justice found no mitigating and substantial aggravating factors. (Mike Frisch)